32 DIVI BOTANICI. 



relation of Porphyry's,* accomplished the cure of one of his servants 

 by directing him to use the flesh of Vipers dressed as fish, for his 

 ordinary food. It is stated by Lopezf for a fact to which he accords 

 his belief, that the people of Congo esteem the Viper as a most deli- 

 cious article of food : they prepare it by roasting, and devour the 

 viands with a gluttonous zest. From a perfect acquaintance with its 

 qualities, the natives of Tonquin^: are accustomed to regale their 

 friends with arrack wherein the bodies of Snakes and Vipers are in- 

 fused. No long period has elapsed since the physicians of France 

 and Italy were in the habit of prescribing broths and jellies composed 

 of Vipers' flesh, for the purpose of purifying the blood when tainted 

 or exhausted by diseases. Now, if the virtues of these reptiles when 

 prepared for food or medicine, are strengthening and restorative, why 

 should they be disused as a remedy? Who knows that the scrofu- 

 lous poison could not be extinguished with liberal draughts of a gene- 

 rous " Viperine wine ?" 



Musa enjoys the reputation of a medical botanist, derived from 

 the singularities of a tract on the properties of the Herb Betony§ 

 and it applications. Very reasonable grounds are assigned for be- 

 stowing the merit of this production on the imperial physician, but it 



" Porphyrins : De Abstinenta ab Esu Animalium, grmci et latine ; 8vo. Can- 

 tabrigies, 1655. Craterus was physician to I'omponius Atticus, the friend of 

 Cicero, who speaks of him with great respect ill his correspondence. Letters 

 to Atticus; Book xii. Epist. 13 and 14. 



•f Reporte of the kingdom of Congo, a regione of Africa ; drawen out of the 

 writinges and discourses of Odoardo Lopez, a Portingall, hy Philippo Piga- 

 fetta ; translated out of Italian, by Abraham Hartwell of Cambridge, 4to. 

 London, 1597- 



% This account rests on the authority of Dampier, in his Voyages, and on 

 that of other travellers who had acquired a knowledge of the Tonquinese 

 customs, by personal observation. Many interesting particulars relating to 

 the country and its inhabitants will be found in the work of Alexander de 

 Rhodes, bearing the title, Tunchinensis Historiee libri duo ; 4to. Lugduni, 

 1652 ; or in its French translation by Henry Albi, published at the same place 

 in the same year; or in the work of Tavernier's translated by Edmund 

 Everard and intituled " Voyage to Tunkin and Japan, with figures ,■" folio, 

 London, 1 680 ; or in the same author's original " Voyages en Turquic, Perse 

 et aux Indes," 3 vols. Paris, 1679. 



§ Some chroniclers will have it, that Apuleius the phytologist could be no 

 other person than Apuleius Celsus, a physician nearly cotemporary with 

 Antonius Musa: others argue that the herbalist was himself the identical 

 Apuleius of Madaura who composed, at a period later by one hundred and 

 fifty years, the famous Golden Ass with its magical fictions ; and, it is to 

 such an Apuleius, that certain bibliographers would transfer the merit of 



